A lot of neat old wood gets pitched in the construction waste bin during renovations of historic houses and other buildings.
As a big city renovator, Martin Lillakas was guilty as charged of throwing that wood out, but it gave him pangs of guilt every time. He saw the error of his ways, and now he rescues it, reclaims and repurposes it into beautiful things.
Lillakas, 33, is the owner of a relatively new business venture called The Green Builder. He turns that sweet, old wood into one-of-a-kind pieces of furniture.
“I salvage the wood myself from historic homes and barns,” he said. “Now that I’ve moved to the country I get around a lot. I talk to a lot of people and source it myself.”
There’s a picture of him on Instagram ripping out a barn floor with a chainsaw. He seems to be going at the wood salvage side of the business with a certain fervour.
Lillakas and his fiancée moved to Guelph area about a year ago from Toronto. They scoured the region for an affordable place with good space for a woodworking shop, and Martin found what he was looking for in Fergus.
He then set about turning salvaged and scavenged wood into furniture and other objects.
“The sky’s the limit,” he said. “I’m an artist. I’m a bit crazy and creative. I don’t like to do just one thing at a time. I let the machinations of my imagination run away with me, and do whatever.”
He scouts the countryside rescuing discarded wood wherever he can find it. Most of it he keeps for his own finely crafted furniture, and some he sells to other craftspeople.
“One of the things I wanted to do was to make sure I kept my bottom-line down,” he said. “When you’re starting out it’s essential that you don’t spend too much money when you may not be making it back.”
The furniture maker said he has long thought of himself as an environmentalist, but he found that he wasn’t doing enough to convince himself that he actually was one. So he changed his behaviour.
“I was throwing out a lot of wood, beautiful stuff, and it just broke me,” he said. “I finally used some of that wood to teach myself fine carpentry, and I learned how to build furniture out of reclaimed wood.”
He makes custom furniture like single-drawer desks, coffee tables, dressers, book display shelves and benches, but also accent walls, custom installations, resin coated tables, butcher blocks and mirrors.
Most of his furniture pieces sell in the $1,000 range and up. Check out what he does at https://www.instagram.com/martinthegreenbuilder/?hl=en.
“The idea of reclaimed wood just seems to be in the public zeitgeist right now,” he said, speaking of why people love it and want it in their homes. “It’s that sustainable thing, but it’s also the charm and the character of it. It speaks for itself. And it spoke to me.”
Having insights into where to find wood fit to be reclaimed helped him get a supply of raw materials fairly quickly.
“But I think the kicker for me was when my girlfriend wanted to buy a couple of reclaimed wood shelves that were thousands of dollars,” he added. “It was her money, but I was like, I can build them myself.”
The Green Builder has an Instagram and an Etsy site, and Lillakas is working on a website.
“I’ve done a lot of ground level guerrilla marketing,” he said. “I’m not a social media guru at all. I would go to meet people face-to-face in their shops and ask them if they want to consign my stuff. That works well for me. I seem to speak to people well.”
People throw out an unreasonable amount of good stuff, he said. As long as other people are willing to pay him for what he makes from discarded wood, he’ll keep making it.
